Florida Wedding Open House

So I guess one of the perks of marrying someone from another state is that you get to have two wedding celebrations! Darrell's mom put together a beautiful wedding open house right on the beach. Everything was so pretty and perfect! It was fun to get all dressed up again, despite the fact that we were melting since it was so hot and humid. Here are some pictures from the great night:

Notice the cute yellow and flowered clothespins holding the pictures up. Courtney (my new sister-in-law) and Darrell's granny made them!

Darrell's long-time Sunday School teacher made our cake. It was so impressive!

 I was in a sun flower heaven with all of the decorations!

 Darrell and his groom's cake

The guy in the corner played Caribbean steel drums. It was the perfect music for a beach-y open house! 

 I just love this picture. I'm so glad our mom's are friends!

Niceville Trip...and yes, it is a nice place

The day after graduation, Darrell & I flew to Florida to have a wedding open house down there (I'll blog about that next) and spend time with his family. We decided it would be fun to have the open house on the beach, so Darrell's mom found the PERFECT beach house to have it at in Destin. His parents ended up renting the beach house for a week so we got to stay there for a few days. My family also came down and stayed in the house and it was just a big party. While my family was there, we all spent time getting things ready for the open house, laid around at the beach, and played games. It is so beautiful there! I keep telling Darrell he is so lucky that he grew up about 15 minutes from the beach.

After my family left, we moved over to the Kelly's house and the party continued. We had so much fun and were extremely spoiled! Some of the highlights included:

Parasailing!

Going to a water park

Going to a cool restaurant on the beach to hear Darrell's best friend's Dad sing and play guitar

Getting a behind the scenes tour of the air force base from Darrell's Lt. Col. father

 Going to the Gulfarium

Going on a dinner cruise (where we got to take turns steering the boat)

& eating at lots of delicious restaurants.

I definitely got my first real taste of good southern cooking. I must say I'm a definite fan of country-fried steak. Unfortunately, I did not over come my lack of interest in sea food...

We had such a fun trip and were sad to come back to Utah. It was great spending more time with Darrell's family. I honestly don't think I could have hand-picked a better family to marry into. We are already looking forward to more trips in the future!

Graduation

I know I am a little behind, but I still wanted to blog about graduation. I officially graduated on August 11th. It is so surreal knowing that I won't ever have to sit in class, write papers, or do any homework ever again (or at least until I have kids...). I must admit it feels pretty good. Now I just need to find a job...

Darrell was such a sweet husband and was so nice to make a big deal out of the day (and week).
When I got home from work on that Monday, there was a poem on the door for the beginning of a scavenger hunt. This ended up being a four day scavenger hunt. Each day he focused on a school year. For example, my freshman year some of my friends and I would go water-ballooning, so one the clues led me to a bag of water balloons. He had different memories like this for each school year and it was really thoughtful. Right after the commencement ceremony, I got another clue that led me on a scavenger hunt to a brand new pair of sparkly diamond earrings!! I was so excited and surprised--his mother taught him well!